Category: 2021

“Everything falls apart eventually.” His words are a car on a hill, climbing gradually, curving at the top, racing down to dismal nothing. “What else is there to say?” The skin along his jaw quivers as he shrugs.

The bearded counselor looks at me as if I should know. But a dome has sealed itself about the room. If I say anything, the words will sound muffled, unable to break through to the outside. I rub the polished arms of the chair as the air conditioning kicks on, blasting cold across my shoulders, and listen to its hum.

Forty-five percent of marriages end in divorce. Men and women remarry, on average, three years later.

Statistics, I suppose, are comforting. Why else would the counselor rattle them off so serenely before we stand and shake his hand a last time?

Silence on the ride home. Because the dome has engulfed us here too in the small car, the once happy car, the Hyundai Sunday Funday car, he called it when it was new, and we took the children out for drives. He always hums when he drives. He hums everywhere. But not on this ride home from the end of our marriage, in this now, as it turns out, piece of shit car with oil leaks and faulty tire pressure sensor.

He turns on the radio, to the oldies station. “Wichita Lineman” is playing. A sappy song, I’d always thought, but now I know I’ve never listened before. A lineman hearing his lost love singing in a phone wire. It is the saddest song I’ve ever heard. 

At home, drawers emptied, folded shirts and pants stacked on his half of the bed so there’s no question where he’ll sleep tonight. In the morning, thermos of coffee and a question when he walks into the kitchen. Am I okay? I take thermos and keys outdoors, to my blue Honda with realtor magnets on the sides, hatch already filled with suitcases, enough clothes and shampoo to last a few weeks. One day when he’s at work I’ll gather the rest. Somehow, I know how he’s standing there on the porch, hand raised in a wave, even though I’m staring straight into the rearview mirror as I back onto the street.

At the end of a long drive lined with silver maples, just outside of town, stands the secluded white house with green shutters. My new listing: five-bedroom, four-bath colonial. The owners live up north and won’t return until end of June. I park around back, open the lockbox, and let myself in.

Houses hold on to time. This one has stood vacant only a few weeks, but smells of heat, of dust from the sparse furnishings left by previous renters. I bring my things inside, adjust the AC, pour a glass of wine, and head out back. I ease down to the side of the pool and slide my feet in the cool water, the sun’s warmth gripping my shoulders. 

Seventy-five percent of marriages that began as an affair end in divorce.

A parting shot, speared toward us on our way out the door. Yes, we’d both left previous spouses for each other. But we’d lasted these ten years, parented two sets of kids to adulthood. Wasn’t that validation enough that what we’d done was right? True?

But then here we are, ten years of overstepping, resentments, misdirections behind us, so maybe not. Blending is hard—a road trip split in two—his family in one car, mine in the other, cheerfully waving across the dotted line, but struggling to keep pace. Always knowing that once the children were gone, we’d travel together. But once they were gone, it turned out, the journey was over. 

Ringing phone again, which I answer finally because my sister has called all last night and today. 

“I was about to call the cops,” she says. “Are you okay?”

My jaw needs to loosen before I can respond, and I’m aware that it’s been ages since I’ve spoken. I wet my lips. “I’m fine.” 

“Where are you?”

“Mom’s.”

“I just talked to mom. Why are you lying? Are you with a guy?”

I cough out a chuckle. Should I be happy I can laugh? No, because it’s more like a strangled clearing. “I meant I’m heading to mom’s. When I check out.” 

I swirl my hand through the blue water, heavy with chlorine smell. 

“Come stay with us. There’s the sofa bed in the basement.”

“I’m fine.”

I say it again after we hang up, again while I shower and settle onto the couch for the night (I may lie and trespass, but I won’t occupy a stranger’s bed). “I’m fine,” I whisper to the shadows, to the moonlight falling across the thin blanket. 

If yesterday hadn’t happened, if he’d never said how everything falls apart eventually, I’d be hearing him now—showering, brushing his teeth, humming all the while. I used to think his aimless tunes were meant for me, but now I understand it was only habit, something to do while puttering about the house, working in the yard, driving. 

Sleep, then a vivid, barren dream. I’m somewhere out west, high above yellow desert split by gray highway, as far as I can see. I breathe fresh air at last, but it’s like breathing mist, and anyway there’s a job to do, trouble on the line, and I have no clue how to fix it. I stare into a metal box of wires, try to trace a coil from one point to the next, but I lose it in the mass of cords, and everything falls apart eventually anyway. High above rocky slopes, road below framed in phone lines, shimmering with heat, his voice is the only sound. He’s humming, there in the wire. But not to me. To everyone, to no one at all. 

Cathy Cruise is the author of the novel A Hundred Weddings, and short stories that have appeared in journals like American Fiction, Appalachian Heritage, Pithead Chapel, Vestal Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and others. She has a master’s in writing and a bachelor’s in English and has received a few writing awards you’ve likely not heard of. When she’s not busy with freelance writing and editing, working on her second novel, or walking her dogs, she can be found reading, begging her kids to play Rummikub, and watching far too much TikTok. You can visit her online at www.cathycruise.com.

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